This chapter discusses the novels that provide helpful insights into questions of intimacy through their representations of the relationships between adolescent women as well as their construction of ...
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This chapter discusses the novels that provide helpful insights into questions of intimacy through their representations of the relationships between adolescent women as well as their construction of relationships between narrator and reader that mimic, reflect, or complicate understandings of intimate friendships. These include Sarah Dessen’s Keeping the Moon, Natasha Friend’s Perfect, Stephanie Hemphill’s Things Left Unsaid, Siobhan Vivian’s A Little Friendly Advice, Lizabeth Zindel’s The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies, and E. Lockhart’s Ruby Oliver series. Although these novels approach their representations of friendships in a variety of ways, each offers a view of the often fundamental role that these relationships play in the experiences of adolescent women. Each novel also constructs the role of the reader as friend, even as the construction of this role may draw attention to or deny constructions of disclosure within friendships as difficult or dangerous.Less

“Opening Myself Like a Book to the Spine” : Disclosure and Discretion in Constructions of Friendship

Sara K. Day

Published in print: 2013-06-03

This chapter discusses the novels that provide helpful insights into questions of intimacy through their representations of the relationships between adolescent women as well as their construction of relationships between narrator and reader that mimic, reflect, or complicate understandings of intimate friendships. These include Sarah Dessen’s Keeping the Moon, Natasha Friend’s Perfect, Stephanie Hemphill’s Things Left Unsaid, Siobhan Vivian’s A Little Friendly Advice, Lizabeth Zindel’s The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies, and E. Lockhart’s Ruby Oliver series. Although these novels approach their representations of friendships in a variety of ways, each offers a view of the often fundamental role that these relationships play in the experiences of adolescent women. Each novel also constructs the role of the reader as friend, even as the construction of this role may draw attention to or deny constructions of disclosure within friendships as difficult or dangerous.

This chapter examines how explicit violations of intimacy—namely, abuse and assault—challenge both narrators’ and readers’ concepts of narrative intimacy. Examining novels in which the narrator is ...
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This chapter examines how explicit violations of intimacy—namely, abuse and assault—challenge both narrators’ and readers’ concepts of narrative intimacy. Examining novels in which the narrator is either the victim of or a witness to such violations, it considers the ways in which narrators use narrative intimacy as a means of reclaiming an understanding of and control over intimacy. These novels include Deb Caletti’s Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, Sarah Dessen’s Dreamland, Niki Burnham’s Sticky Fingers, Louisa Luna’s Brave New Girl, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, and Courtney Summers’ Cracked Up to Be.Less

“She Doesn’t Say a Word” : Violations and Reclamations of Intimacy

Sara K. Day

Published in print: 2013-06-03

This chapter examines how explicit violations of intimacy—namely, abuse and assault—challenge both narrators’ and readers’ concepts of narrative intimacy. Examining novels in which the narrator is either the victim of or a witness to such violations, it considers the ways in which narrators use narrative intimacy as a means of reclaiming an understanding of and control over intimacy. These novels include Deb Caletti’s Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, Sarah Dessen’s Dreamland, Niki Burnham’s Sticky Fingers, Louisa Luna’s Brave New Girl, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, and Courtney Summers’ Cracked Up to Be.

This chapter discusses novels that provide insight into a larger consequence of cultural demands about adolescent women and intimacy, namely that by discouraging young women from exploring or ...
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This chapter discusses novels that provide insight into a larger consequence of cultural demands about adolescent women and intimacy, namely that by discouraging young women from exploring or expressing their sexual desires before they are “ready,” cultural demands deny them the possibility of fully engaging in the sort of emotional intimacy deemed necessary for sexual relationships. These novels include Sarah Dessen’s Someone Like You, Kristen Tracy’s Lost It, Sara Zarr’s Story of a Girl, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga.Less

“He Couldn’t get close Enough” : The Exploration and Relegation of Desire

Sara K. Day

Published in print: 2013-06-03

This chapter discusses novels that provide insight into a larger consequence of cultural demands about adolescent women and intimacy, namely that by discouraging young women from exploring or expressing their sexual desires before they are “ready,” cultural demands deny them the possibility of fully engaging in the sort of emotional intimacy deemed necessary for sexual relationships. These novels include Sarah Dessen’s Someone Like You, Kristen Tracy’s Lost It, Sara Zarr’s Story of a Girl, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga.

By examining the novels of critically and commercially successful authors such as Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You), Stephenie Meyer (the Twilight series), and Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), this book ...
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By examining the novels of critically and commercially successful authors such as Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You), Stephenie Meyer (the Twilight series), and Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), this book explores the use of narrative intimacy as a means of reflecting and reinforcing larger, often contradictory, cultural expectations regarding adolescent women, interpersonal relationships, and intimacy. It explains the construction of narrator–reader relationships in recent American novels written about, and marketed to, adolescent women. The author explains, though, that such levels of imagined friendship lead to contradictory cultural expectations for the young women so deeply obsessed with reading these novels. She coins the term “narrative intimacy” to refer to the implicit relationship between narrator and reader that depends on an imaginary disclosure and trust between the story’s narrator and the reader. Through critical examination, the inherent contradictions between this enclosed, imagined relationship and the real expectations for adolescent women’s relations prove to be problematic. In many novels for young women, adolescent female narrators construct conceptions of the adolescent woman reader that allow the narrator to understand the reader as a confidant, a safe and appropriate location for disclosure. At the same time, such novels offer frequent warnings against the sort of unfettered confession the narrators perform. Friendships are marked as potential sites of betrayal and rejection. Romantic relationships are presented as inherently threatening to physical and emotional health.Less

Reading Like a Girl : Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature

Sara K. Day

Published in print: 2013-06-03

By examining the novels of critically and commercially successful authors such as Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You), Stephenie Meyer (the Twilight series), and Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), this book explores the use of narrative intimacy as a means of reflecting and reinforcing larger, often contradictory, cultural expectations regarding adolescent women, interpersonal relationships, and intimacy. It explains the construction of narrator–reader relationships in recent American novels written about, and marketed to, adolescent women. The author explains, though, that such levels of imagined friendship lead to contradictory cultural expectations for the young women so deeply obsessed with reading these novels. She coins the term “narrative intimacy” to refer to the implicit relationship between narrator and reader that depends on an imaginary disclosure and trust between the story’s narrator and the reader. Through critical examination, the inherent contradictions between this enclosed, imagined relationship and the real expectations for adolescent women’s relations prove to be problematic. In many novels for young women, adolescent female narrators construct conceptions of the adolescent woman reader that allow the narrator to understand the reader as a confidant, a safe and appropriate location for disclosure. At the same time, such novels offer frequent warnings against the sort of unfettered confession the narrators perform. Friendships are marked as potential sites of betrayal and rejection. Romantic relationships are presented as inherently threatening to physical and emotional health.